Craving an apple. And you know what? I am going to have one on Rosh Hashanah. Not Jewish but my awesome boyfriend is. And I am going to have one apple (no worries, won’t be dipping it in honey.)
and no, don’t give me any low carb alternatives. WILL eat an apple. Then I will be done, promptly return to carnivore and will eat my next apple Rosh hashanah 2020!
I feel a bit guilty. heck, an apple isn’t even KETO. But dang it. I will eat it.
The people I’ve been following on Twitter have been posting CGM readings of what happens if they eat an apple…it’s not pretty. Dr. Ann Childers hits about 200 blood glucose.
My suggestion: Don’t make a habit of this. 
Enjoy the apple, April. I don’t think that anyone should tell you off for that or that you should feel guilty at all.
If you were going to eat them daily; then that would not be the best, but one once a year is perfectly fine!!
I already know an apple isn’t approved for even keto and VERY aware of the carb count. Having one apple for a Rosh hashanah 2019 and having my next one in 2020…doens’t strike me as regular…or perhaps that is too regular or habit forming for “keto’ers” and “carnivores” Thus…waiting till 2020 for my next apple after this celebratory one!
I have no problem with the apple. In fact, on Thanksgiving this year, I’ll likely have potatoes, bread, dessert, … Same with Christmas.
I was surprised at the level of blood sugar the people were getting, though. I want to test my kids, as they love fruit. Dr. Ann Childers shows CGM data for people, and their sugars are out of control, with kids in particular being low. She then gets them to do simple things like eat a low carb breakfast, and it corrects most everything. For kids, their overall blood sugar goes UP, which limits hypoglycemia. It’s amazing.
I plan on getting a CGM for myself, but using it on my oldest. I can say “this causes your blood sugar to go up and cause other issues, like being hungry”, but there’s nothing like seeing hard data. Now, if I can only convince her that it’s her idea…
I wore a CGM for well over a year, but I never ate an apple. I’ll have to try that the next time I get a sensor.
I am tempted to get a CGM… on my xmas list…
Since I celebrate the JEwish holidays with my bf… he better return the favor and get me xmas gifts
Erm… @April_Harkness…if I looked like you I’d be like
“I’mma eat allll da apples, beeotch!”
You are goals.
(not my goals as I’m a flabby old bag and totally down with that and not down with gym workouts, but goals for younger folk who still give a damn 
).
If you’re carnivore, you’re probably not going to see much. Here’s a random day for me:
BBS=lifting to failure. My blood sugar goes up all day until about noon then down all day until about midnight. My highest blood sugars are around noon, even if I don’t eat. I ate dinner on this day, but did not write it down. Edit: I also don’t eat breakfast, so the increase in blood sugar is due to exercise/physiological insulin resistance/etc. And I’ve tested and coffee does not seem to cause a blood sugar rise.
If you just eat meat, it’s going to be relatively flat.
Here’s Thanksgiving from two years ago:
The 9.7 was Thanksgiving dinner (bread, stuffing, potatoes, etc.), the hump after that was dessert (not sure what). You can see how short the peaks are, about or less than an hour. You can see that I crashed a bit after dessert. The 8.2 at night was more Tgiving dinner.
If you eat more than meat, you might get some effect. But if you eat just meat, don’t get too shocked if the CGM is completely flat (other than if you’re like me, you’ll have higher morning blood sugar and it’ll go down until at night when it’s lowest).
You don’t need to eat the whole apple. Take a quarter of the apple and you’re fine.
I dip it in sugar free pancake syrup.
Have a Healthy Happy New Year (Rosh Hashanah is for the whole world…you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy it:))
Don’t flame me folks, but I’m curious. Isn’t a nearly-straight line on a CGM graph of a non-diabetic surely simply showing that the pancreas is secreting the right amount of insulin to deal with, say, the apple?
I’m assuming that the reason there isn’t a large peak is just because insulin has kicked in to deal with the glucose.
Well, yes. But… the object of the exercise is keep that line flat as consistently as possible and to avoid those rises in glucose/insulin. But as everyone has been saying so far, a one off once per year is doodly squat.
BTW, here’s the nutrition for an apple. If you switch the scale to 100 grams it’s a bit over 11 net grams per 100 total. So even a fairly large apple probably won’t break 50 grams of carbs. Although it contains fructose, which has other issues of its own. Even so, once a year…
Absolutely! I live my type 1 life by this mantra! And I’m obsessed by the very hard-to-achieve straight lines on my own CGM - they’re my life’s work.
But for those who produce their own insulin, the flat line proves the insulin is working - it doesn’t show that an apple doesn’t trigger an insulin response. It shows that the insulin has responded in such a way as for the apple to not cause blood glucose to rise.
Dont inhale (swallow)
I had an apple today (1/2 of one) in a smoothy. I have one or two vegetable smoothies every month or two. It also has blueberries in it. Glucose goes to about 135 for a short while. I’m not carnivore, I eat lots of macadamia nuts as well (for the calories)
If you consume sufficient carbs to increase glucose, a CGM will show that increase, as Bob’s graph shows clearly. Insulin doing it’s job efficiently will bring it back down quickly, again as Bob’s graph shows. In the OP’s case, I would expect to see glucose rise then fall again as her insulin removes it.
For those of us with normally functioning insulin, a consistently flat line shows little or no glucose/insulin response because we consume too few carbs to affect our glucose concentration. If glucose remains at or near baseline then insulin does so as well, thus I would expect a continuous flat line. Bob’s graph shows that as well other than his brief carb excursions. That seems to be the rationale behind the advice here to eat sub-20 grams of carbs.
That is true. Here’s one where I ate a pound of ground beef and 1 can of anchovies:
As you can see, this is dead flat. But behind the scenes, I’m getting protein, which will cause some insulin response. However, counteracting that is a glucagon response. That’s why it’s flat. If my glucagon response was not good, my blood sugar would go down. And I’m sure it’s even much more complex than what I said, as the two have to work in concert to achieve this.
If you eat very low carb (basically none in this meal), you don’t have carbs driving sugar, but protein can still cause an insulin response.
And you can see how well it works:
This is a 30 day graph of average blood sugar, and it includes Thanksgiving I show above. These are the 90% indications, though. There’s another graph that shows all the swings, but that one is at home.
The goal is to keep your blood sugar within some range, not too high or too low. If we had insulin meters, we could optimize that too.
This also shows what I was saying about my blood sugar going up all day until about noon or less, then going down all day until midnight or so. I have months of data that look just like this. If I fast, the whole curve moves down; if I eat, it goes up. But the shape is the same.
Now this side of things I’d love to see!
And regarding insulin requirements in the absence of carbs, I repeatedly find I need to explain to my diabetes nurse that yes I do often need to take insulin before eating when I’m not having carbohydrate, depending on what else is going on/time of day etc… and each time I hear ‘we wouldn’t recommend that’!
